Research Guides: Ken and Flo Jacobs: Resources to Learn More

Rare and Distinctive Collections

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Jamie Marie Wagner

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Seeking the Monkey King (Ken Jacobs, 2011)

Ken and Flo Jacobs have been unique and influential figures in American experimental cinema since the 1950s. In addition to creating a prolific artistic catalog, they were leaders in developing networks and resources for independent film exhibition, distribution, and education. The Jacobs' original archive of correspondence, production documents, teaching material, and writing was acquired by the CU Boulder Libraries' Rare and Distinctive Collections in 2021. Learn how to visit and access the Jacobs Collection at https://www.colorado.edu/libraries/libraries-collections/rare-distinctive.

CU Boulder Libraries offer the resources below to learn more about Ken and Flo Jacobs, their artistic work, and their positions within the history of American experimental cinema.

Archival Collections at CU Boulder

Ken and Flo Jacobs Collection
The collection includes correspondence, film festival entry forms, grant applications, oral history interviews, and written materials related to the Jacobs’ multi-decade long career in New York, as well as Ken Jacobs' teaching in the Department of Cinema at Binghamton University.
Don Yannacito Collection
Don Yannacito has been a lecturer and senior instructor in CU Boulder since 1975. This collection contains records, audio recordings, and digital photographs related to the Rocky Mountain Film Center and First Person Cinema, an avant-garde film and video program.

Stan Brakhage Collection

Stan Brakhage Collection
Stan Brakhage (1933-2003) was a filmmaker, author, and film studies professor at the University of Colorado. His papers consist of personal and professional correspondence, academic materials, manuscripts and publications, and original art books and made items, as well as photographs, slides, negatives, and film strips from Brakhage’s work.
Brakhage Biography Project Collection
The Stan Brakhage Biography Project was conducted from 2017 to 2021 by David E. James, emeritus professor of Cinematic Arts at USC, to compile audio interviews and other documents on the experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Interviews include Ken Jacobs, Jonas Mekas, Ernie Gehr, Michael Snow, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, and others. James also conducted a series of 12 interviews with Jane Wodening, first wife of Stan Brakhage and subject of many of his early films.

CU Digital Library

Ken and Flo Jacobs Collection - audio
Original digitized audio recordings from the Ken and Flo Jacobs Collection in the CU Bouder Libraries include classroom lectures from SUNY Binghamton and elsewhere, visiting talks and interviews by Ken Jacobs and other filmmakers, radio programs, performance rehearsals, and casual conversations. Audio tapes in the collection are in the process of being digitized (ca. 2023). More recordings will be added to the CU Digital Library as they become available.
Stan Brakhage Collection - audio
Original digitized audio from the Stan Brakhage Collection in the CU Boulder Libraries, including lectures and interviews by Stan Brakhage and other film artists and scholars; full episodes of radio shows produced by Brakhage for broadcast in the 1980s; poetry readings, music, and experimental recordings of domestic sounds.

Media Resources

Electronic Arts Intermix Educational Streaming
EAI offers CU Boulder students, staff, and faculty access to sreaming videos from exeprimental media artists, including over 50 titles by Ken Jacobs, dated between 1960 and 2014.

Ken Jacobs collection, Vol. 1 by Kino Classics
Publication Date: 2021
Two-disc Blu-Ray collection, featuring 13 films by Ken Jacobs - including The Whirled (1961), The Sky Socialist (1963/64), and Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son (1969) - as well as conversation between Ken Jacobs and film scholar Tom Gunning. Available soon in the University Libraries!

History and Context

Optic Antics by Michele Pierson (Editor); David E. James (Editor); Paul Arthur (Editor)
Call Number: PN1998.3.J2655 O58 2011
ISBN: 9780199739561
Publication Date: 2011
While Ken Jacobs's importance is well-recognized, this is the first volume dedicated entirely to him. It includes essays by prominent film scholars along with photographs and personal pieces from artists and critics, all of which testify to the extraordinary variety and influence of his accomplishments. Anyone interested in cinema or experimental arts will be well-rewarded by a greater acquaintance with the genius, the innovation, and the optical antics of Ken Jacobs.
Binghamton Babylon : voices from the cinema department, 1967-1977 by Scott M. MacDonald
Call Number: PN1993.8.U5 S75 2015
ISBN: 1438458908
Publication Date: 2015
Scott M. MacDonald documens: the emergence of a cinema department at the State University of New York at Binghamton between 1967 and 1977. MacDonald draws on interviews with faculty, students, and visiting artists — including Hollis Frampton, Ernie Gehr, J. Hoberman, Ken Jacobs, Peter Kubelka,Phil Solomon, Maureen Turim, and many others — to explore the emergence of cinema as a viable subject of study in colleges and universities. He concludes with an analysis of the pedagogical dimensions of the films that were produced in Binghamton, including Larry Gottheim's Horizons; Jacobs's Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son; Gehr's Serene Velocity; Frampton's Critical Mass; and Nicholas Ray's final film, We Can't Go Home Again.
Visionary Film: the American Avant-Garde, 1943-2000 by P. Adams Sitney
Call Number: PN1995.9.E96 S53
ISBN: 9781282367586
Publication Date: 2002
Visionary Film has been hailed as the most complete work written on the exciting, often puzzling, and always controversial genre of American avant-garde film. The book remains the standard text on American avant-garde film since the publication of its first edition in 1974. The third edition restores a chapter on the films of Gregory J. Markopoulos and brings Stiney's discussion of the principal genres and major filmmakers up to the year 2000.
Underground film : a critical history by Tyler, Parker
Call Number: PN1995.9.E96 T9
Publication Date: 1970
Parker Tyler (1904-1974), a major American film critic, was intimate with and respected by many of the underground and experimental filmmakers of his time. In this book, Tyler evaluates the Underground in general and the seminal films in particular, covering the history and scope of the genre with insight and verve.
Cinema expanded : avant-garde film in the age of intermedia by Jonathan Walley
Call Number: PN1995.9.E96
ISBN: 9780190938673
Publication Date: 2020
'Cinema Expanded' provides scholarly studies of lesser-known avant-garde cinematic works. In addition to the works of artists like Andy Warhol and Nam June Paik it argues that these works radically explore cinema's outer limits, even challenging the definition of cinema itself. Includes extended sections on Ken Jacobs' Shadow Play, Nervous System, and Nervous Magic Lantern performances.

Campus Resources

Brakhage Center for Media Arts
The Brakhage Center serves as a forum to examine the moving image as an aesthetically and socially responsive art form, especially within a culture that has become progressively more visual. Through symposia, conferences, screenings, panels, presentations, exhibitions, residencies, and other activities, the Center features the works of past, current, and future artistic innovators. These activities also provide a dynamic platform for discussion among artists, scholars, curators, and students.